From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Aug 23 15:46:48 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A97016A4D1 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:46:48 +0000 (GMT) Received: from out010.verizon.net (out010pub.verizon.net [206.46.170.133]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9817043D31 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:46:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from [192.168.1.3] ([68.160.193.218]) by out010.verizon.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.06 201-253-122-130-106-20030910) with ESMTP id <20040823154646.GZLI14383.out010.verizon.net@[192.168.1.3]>; Mon, 23 Aug 2004 10:46:46 -0500 Message-ID: <412A1159.9070702@mac.com> Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 11:46:33 -0400 From: Chuck Swiger Organization: The Courts of Chaos User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Malcolm Kay References: <200408240107.22461.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> In-Reply-To: <200408240107.22461.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH at out010.verizon.net from [68.160.193.218] at Mon, 23 Aug 2004 10:46:46 -0500 cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cron and vfork X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:46:48 -0000 Malcolm Kay wrote: [ ... ] > The presence of a problem became evident when when I was > unable to log into the machine Monday morning, neither from > a console or through ssh on the LAN. At the console it puts up > a login prompt and accepts the name entry but that is all -- > no password prompt and no further activity. I've had to reboot > the machine with a brutal physical reset. Your description sounds somewhat like the machine ran out of virtual memory, or possibly some other critical resource like process table slots. Run top continuously for a few days and see what you see, or consider fancier monitoring capabilities from ports. -- -Chuck